


Shake

by aderyn



Series: Deep Map [9]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: TRF, rooftops earthquakes & arrhythmias, shaken & stirred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-07
Updated: 2012-09-07
Packaged: 2017-11-13 17:54:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/506158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are different types of faults, he knows, normal and reverse, reverse and strike-slip; the plates clash and the earth follows and oh, who cares what kind of arrhythmia it is; it’s still heart-shaken...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shake

_“...Take me back to beautiful England_

_And the great and filthiness of ages_

_And battered books and fog rolling down behind the mountains...”—PJ Harvey, “The Last Living Rose”_

 

Sherlock wakes to Molly’s hands in his hair.

Oh.

“Sorry,” says Molly.

He thinks her eyes are brown, but they might be green. The genetics of green, of brown; he’s drifting... it doesn’t really matter what colour John’s eyes are, for example (though of course he knows); what matters is what John does with them, where he looks, the way his gaze stablises despite...

“No, wake up,” says Molly.

What?

He snaps to, settles back into the flaw of the transport.

“The hair was better than cold water to the face,” Molly says.

“The vagus nerve,” he says, “the heart...”

It’s not that I need to be told that, she wants to say, but doesn’t.

*******

Sherlock hasn’t cried since...well, that’s not entirely true.  Not for long time, has he.  But he knows how to do it; he’s done it. (Did he, on the roof, so sick he can’t recall, cold in the arms, cold in the ribcage, in the wind, his intentions spinning in the wind, fricatives; he can hardly bear to recall.)  It’s foreign, but he’s done it.

It was cold up there, and nauseating, and he was sick with secrets.

He’s not shaking.  It was cold on the roof.  Now he’s shaking, but with the tensor of the assassin.  He can’t blink and take it back.

*******

A faultline runs though England, knifes under the lime and the glen and the city and one day England will shake, will fall. The earth moves and the Underground rumbles and nothing can wake the dead, not for a long time.

*******

For chrissakes he’s had this tremor for three days, John thinks, but nothing sways him from his path. (To the graveyard and back again, to the graveyard and back again, to the graveyard...)

There are different types of faults, he knows, normal and reverse, reverse and strike-slip; the plates clash and the earth follows and oh, who cares what kind of asperity it is; it’s still heart-shaken.

What will he say when he sees him again, when the chambers tremble, when they meet and the chambers tremble; thank you, you arrhythmogenic bastard?  Thank you very much.  (For the ischemic reperfusion injury, the oxidant stress, for the wrench of the fault and the heart, for the ...)

There are different types of quakes, he knows.

This one ends and begins at Bart’s.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [ P J Harvey, “The Last Living Rose”, from Let England Shake](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWBrWhrKchQ)
> 
>  
> 
>  [Experts Predict 5.5 Magnitude Earthquake Could Hit London at Any Time](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/expert-predicts-55-magnitude-earthquake-could-hit-london-at-any-time-2081634.html)
> 
>    
> [Earthquakes, the British Geological Survey](http://www.bgs.ac.uk/research/earthquakes/home.html)
> 
>    
> "The piers are pummelled by the waves;  
> In a lonely field the rain  
> Lashes an abandoned train;  
> Outlaws fill the mountain caves."—W.H. Auden, “The Fall of Rome”


End file.
